Management Mastery

The circumstances for getting feedback from your boss, whether positive or negative, can range from a chance meeting in the hallway to a formal performance review.  In this week’s episode of Management Mastery, we discuss the range of ways you can get feedback from your boss and how you should respond to each.

This week on Management Mastery we discuss getting feedback from your clients. As we have said in previous episodes, you always have at least two bosses: Your immediate supervisor and your client or clients. And everyone has clients.  Being able to get honest feedback from your client is critical to your success as a manager.  In this episode we discuss the benefits of getting honest feedback from clients and how to build the kind of open and trusting relationship with a client that encourages that kind of feedback. We also talk about how to have a fruitful feedback conversation with a client and how to follow up such a meeting.  

Like it or not, it looks like remote working is here to stay.  What is currently known about this relatively new workplace reality, how widespread is it how do workers feel about it and what should managers who have staff working remotely – whether part-time or full time – be aware of in order to maximize the positives and minimize the negatives?  We’ll address some of these questions in this episode.

We have defined trust to be “when the manager believes their staff can be relied on to carry out their assignments and staff, in turn, believe that the manager knows what they are doing and will do what they say they will do.  Trust requires three characteristics:  competence, character, and caring. In this episode we discuss why “Caring” is critical in building and maintaining trust between manager and staff.

One of the most important elements of successful management is trust: The trust of the manager in their staff as well as the trust of the staff in their manager.  Along with Competence and Caring, Character is one of the three key elements needed to build and maintain trust. We discuss competence and caring in separate episodes.  In this episode, we explain what we mean by “character” and how it is manifested by a trusted manager.

We have spoken about the importance of building trust with team members in many of our episodes.  Trust, in business, is when the manager believes their staff  can be relied on to carry out their assignments and staff, in turn, believe that the manager knows what they are doing and will do what they say they will do.  What is required to build trust are three characteristics:  competence, character, and caring.  We will discuss competence first because  you can’t be effective without competence.-That’s the bedrock or the foundation.  We will cover character and caring in future episodes.

Influence is one of the most powerful tools a manager has.  In this episode we will discuss What It is, why it’s Important and how can you increase yours and use it most effectively.  

Communication is how you move from merely providing information to entertaining, directing, or inspiring others and, eventually, to influencing them.  And, influence is more than words, it is about building a strong emotional bond with your audience.  Keep in mind, when we say “audience” in this episode, we mean everything from a single person to a room-full.  Influence is all about building an emotional connection with your audience.  That connection is what determines whether or not people are going to like you, trust you, and want to follow you.

When asked why they enjoy their jobs, young professionals consistently tell us that 3 of the most important things are:  “A job that is challenging, the autonomy to do my job, and being able to learn new and marketable skills.”  In this episode, we discuss ways a manager can help staff get what they are looking for in their jobs. 

In one way or another, every good manager is a coach.  As a coach, you want to make your staff members as effective and productive as possible. 

One of the most useful tools for developing staff is through the use of “Coaching Through Questioning”.  In this episode we explain this management approach and discuss how it can make you a more effective manager and your staff more productive.

We show how to use questions to help clarify expectations, identify gaps and opportunities, and explore different practices and ideas.

Truly effective managers act more like the leader of a team than the boss of a department.  In this episode, we discuss what it takes for the boss of a department to become the leader of an effective team and why it is important.